It seems that deadlines can be issued and then broken.
According to the Iran Nuclear Review Act of 2015, President Barack Obama was to submit a deal with Iran to Congress by June 30. That changed to Thursday, then Friday. Lawmakers then would have 30 days to review the agreement. If negotiations go beyond today, July 9, Congress would have 60 days to review the deal which means more time to potentially spike the deal.
If Iran’s “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is telling the P5+1 and anyone else who will listen that his country will only consider negotiations if they include immediate easing of economic sanctions, then an important question is simply “what part of rejection of any inspections of military sites or interviews with Iranian nuclear scientists don’t you understand?” Plus, there is the issue of U.N. sanctions of military sales to Iran. That is also apparently a sticking point for the Iranians.
House and Senate members on both sides of the aisle don’t want this accord to happen in its current form. Saudi Arabia, a regional rival of Iran doesn’t trust this deal. The Israelis? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been warning our well-intentioned President Obama for years that if he signs an accord with Iran, it could only result in the opposite of what the Iranians are selling to him. We’ve heard that the accord would push back the Iranians’ ability to militarize nuclear power some 10 years.
But Iran has come out and said countless times that it seeks the annihilation of Israel. Its financing and training of Shiite militias in Lebanon as well as the thousands of missiles pointed towards Israel’s major cities from Hezbollah positions within Lebanon should be enough of a shout out to the President and Secretary of State John Kerry.
Last weekend, Kerry told the media that the talks with Iran “could go either way.”
He added that if there is no deal that the President has always said “we’ll be prepared to walk away. It’s not what anybody wants. We want to get an agreement. But I’ve said from the moment I became involved in this we want a good agreement, only a good agreement, and we’re not going to shave anywhere at the margins in order to just get an agreement.”
We can only hope that the President is hearing what his closest ally in the Middle East is saying, but also what the people elected to power in this country are saying as well. Iran cannot, based on its track record, be trusted to wait 10 years to develop its nuclear program. This agreement is too much of an appeasement which we sadly feel will end up hurting not only Israel and Saudi Arabia and the entire Middle East, but the U.S. as well.
Several components must be part of any deal with Iran, including monitoring and verification of all nuclear sites, that means its military sites as well. Then and only then could we even think about lifting sanctions.
But by that time, Obama will be long out of office, leaving the problem for newly elected officials in the U.S. and for generations of Israelis.
Mr. President, this can’t be about creating a foreign policy legacy. This has to be instead a show of strength from your Administration. Act as if the very future of world peace depends on your actions.
A U.S. signature on a proposed accord with Iran at this point would only heighten the threat of this toxic Iranian regime.
History has taught us that when anti-Semitic dictators have pledged death to the Jewish people, they usually at least attempt to follow through. Why isn’t our president listening to what the Iranian mullahs have been saying all along about the death of Israel? Even during these negotiations, that stance on Israel hasn’t changed.
Mr. Obama, this agreement, should you sign it, will be for you either a legacy or an appeasement, not seen since Lord Neville Chamberlain met with Hitler.
We all know how that ended up.a
